NimbRo Avatar: Interactive Immersive Telepresence with Force-Feedback Telemanipulation
This addresses the need for more human-like robotic teleoperation for remote interaction, but it appears incremental as it builds on existing telepresence and telemanipulation concepts.
The paper tackled the problem of creating an interactive immersive telepresence system with force-feedback telemanipulation, resulting in a robotic avatar system that was successfully evaluated in user studies and complex missions, though no concrete performance numbers were provided.
Robotic avatars promise immersive teleoperation with human-like manipulation and communication capabilities. We present such an avatar system, based on the key components of immersive 3D visualization and transparent force-feedback telemanipulation. Our avatar robot features an anthropomorphic bimanual arm configuration with dexterous hands. The remote human operator drives the arms and fingers through an exoskeleton-based operator station, which provides force feedback both at the wrist and for each finger. The robot torso is mounted on a holonomic base, providing locomotion capability in typical indoor scenarios, controlled using a 3D rudder device. Finally, the robot features a 6D movable head with stereo cameras, which stream images to a VR HMD worn by the operator. Movement latency is hidden using spherical rendering. The head also carries a telepresence screen displaying a synthesized image of the operator with facial animation, which enables direct interaction with remote persons. We evaluate our system successfully both in a user study with untrained operators as well as a longer and more complex integrated mission. We discuss lessons learned from the trials and possible improvements.